07/22/2026
The Super 4
Looking back at my time at Tiger there was a lot going on with the 3 wheeler, but at the same time it was the birth of the "Super 4". When I got there in late 85' I was use to going out and riding a lot on Powroll's mile long MX track and half mile TT track, at Tiger there was only one place to ride and that was inside the shop at night after everyone was gone. I would move things off to the side and make a track inside. The pics only show about half the shops length, I could get in 3rd gear pretty good, just wasn't room for error! Peter had built a wooden ramp just like the Mickey Thompson track had so I could dial in the Super 4 and 3 Wheeler's FOX Shocks. In the late summer months I would open the shop doors after 30min. of riding because I would start get sloppy after breathing in the the 2 stoke race gas (LOL), but then the mosquitoes would be so thick on the lights it would get dark inside. Yeah the land of 10,000 lakes also had a bazillion mosquitoes! And in the dead of winter you couldn't only ride the 30min. and could only leave the doors open a little while before you froze, it just wasn't the best conditions for training, but I made due.
> The Super for was more like a Suzuki Quad Racer in front. I didn't know anything about setting up a front end, so the guy that designed it gave us two choices, make it so it had long travel with some bump steer, meaning as you went through the travel the toe in would go in and out to a degree. Or it could have wash, meaning the toe in would stay the same and as it went through the travel it would just get wide, that sounded the best to me, but just like the Suzuki it wasn't as good as Honda's FourTrax design where the tipped the a-arms back and had the best of both set ups. It was great for TT but as we seen over the years Honda was the best on MX.
> I only got to try and race it at the Mickey Thompson race in Pontiac Mich. I felt good in practice, the ramps were the same so I had it working pretty good. The first heat went bad in the first corner when someone rear ended me and it took out about four of us in a chain reaction. I ended up under the nerph bars and couldn't get out from underneath the quad, and once the flipped it off me I found we had broke a tie rod. Being the one and only Super 4 we had no spare parts and I was out just like that! Having never raced a quad before even if we would have had spare parts I wouldn't have know what to bring, it is what it was.
> At this point the only time I really got to ride was inside the shop and at the track, but the only tracks now were ice races. I only raced once for Honda on the ice and that didn't go good. I won one race but only because Daryl Rath gave me some much needed tires. New York Ice racing was nice compared to Minnesota ice, I had to sit in the van the whole day and start the 3 wheeler 15. min. before the race and let it idle to get it warm enough to race, not fun. My hat is off to people that live in the mid west and go racing all the time, but it wasn't for me! See less
